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The Secret Painter by Joe Tucker Canongate, [pounds sterling]18.99, pp. 224 We don't all get to achieve what we could have achieved in life. And yes, I know, so what? [...]

Four Stars: A Life Reviewed by Joel Golby Mudlark, [pounds sterling]16.99, pp. 320 If you are under 40, you probably already know of Joel Golby. He writes stream-of-consciousness personal essays [...]

Munichs by David Peace Faber, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 480 If you have been to a football match in the past few years you will doubtless be familiar with what the [...]

My Family: The Memoir by David Baddiel Fourth Estate, [pounds sterling]22, pp. 368 According to Clive James: 'A life without fame can be a good life, but fame without a [...]

Engineers of Human Souls: Four Writers Who Changed Human Minds by Simon Ings Bridge Street Press, [pounds sterling]25, pp. 368 'The production of souls is more important than the production [...]

Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired Our Brains and Conquered the World by Joshua Paul Dale Profile, [pounds sterling]18.99, pp. 288 Joshua Paul Dale is a professor of American literature and culture [...]

Adventures in Volcanoland: What Volcanoes Tell us About the World and Ourselves by Tamsin Mather Abacus, [pounds sterling]19.99, pp. 368 Volcanoes, volcanoes, volcanoes. You wait years for a good book [...]

Retroland: A Reader's Guide to the Dazzling Diversity of Modern Fiction by Peter Kemp Yale University Press, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 320 It is very possible that Peter Kemp is the [...]

The Book Forger: The True Story of a Literary Crime that Fooled the World by Joseph Hone Chatto, [pounds sterling]22, pp. 336 Literary scandals - like actual scandals come and [...]

Toy Fights: A Boyhood by Don Paterson Faber, [pounds sterling]16.99, pp. 384 Memoirs by poets--the Top Ten? It's an admittedly niche category, and since no one would ask this in [...]

Milk: Through a Glass Darkly by Peter Blegvad Uniform Books, [pounds sterling]10, pp. 96 It's been a while since I read a good cento, from the Latin and derived from [...]

The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World by James Ball Bloomsbury, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 304 Whether you're left, right or just somewhere vaguely in between, wherever you're coming from [...]

The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery by Adam Gopnik Riverrun, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 288 The Imagination Muscle: Where Good Ideas Come From (And How to Have More of [...]

White Spines: Confessions of a Book Collector by Nicholas Royle Salt, [pounds sterling]9.99, pp. 176 Guarded by Dragons: Encounters with Rare Books and Rare People by Rick Gekoski Constable, [pounds [...]

The Letters of Basil Bunting edited by Alex Niven OUP, [pounds sterling]35, pp. 496 Funny old life, eh? Small world, etc. In one of those curious, Alan Bennett-y, believe-it-or-not-but-I-once-delivered-meat-to-the moth-er-in-law-of-T.S.-Eliot-type [...]

Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks by Patrick Radden Keefe Picador, [pounds sterling]20, pp. 368 Do not be deterred, but do be warned. Rogues isn't a book [...]

The Missing Cryptoqueen by Jamie Bartlett W.H. Allen, [pounds sterling]16.99, pp. 320 This is a depressing book. It's a reminder of everything that is sick, broken and generally maledicted about [...]

Book Parts edited by Dennis Duncan and Adam Smyth OUP, 30 [pounds sterling], pp. 352 Book Parts--hardback, 352 pages, with colour plate section and in-text black and white illustrations, 234*156mm, [...]

The Lifespan of a Fact by John D'Agata and Jim Fingal Riverrun, 16.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 128 At the time, I'm sure it all seemed absolutely hilarious. It was in [...]

The Map of Knowledge: How Classical Idols Were Lost and Found: A History in Seven Cities by Violet Moller Picador, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 294 I am undoubtedly, alas, an [...]

In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate the Worldby Simon GarfieldCanongate, 16.99[pounds sterling], pp. 289You will doubtless recall the model villages of your childhood holidays: the cold rain beating down upon [...]

Red Thread: On Mazes & Labyrinths by Charlotte Higgins Cape, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 216 Follow This Thread: A Maze Book to Get Lost In by Henry Eliot Particular Books, [...]

So Brightly at the Last: Clive James and the Passion for Poetry by Ian Shircore Red Door, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 261 Clive James (1939-2019), in the much-quoted words of [...]

Flatness by B. W. Higman Reaktion, 16.95 [pounds sterling], pp. 246 On the website of the Australian National University in Canberra, emeritus professor of history Barry Higman lists his research [...]

Messi: Lessons in Styleby Jordi Punti, translated from the Catalan by Peter BushShort Books, 9.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 204If you don't know who Lionel Messi is you won't enjoy this [...]

Alas, the great Alan Partridge never got to make Inner-City Sumo, despite his famously desperate pitch to BBC TV commissioners. 'We take fat people from the inner cities, put them [...]

You remember slow TV? Pioneered by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, with its classic Bergensbanen--minutt for minutt (2009), which simply stuck a camera on the front of a train and recorded [...]

Older readers will perhaps recall the once popular Sunday evening TV programme Scrapheap Challenge, in which oily, boilersuited blokes competed to build machines out of materials scavenged from a scrapheap. [...]

See What Can Be Done: Essays, Criticism and Commentary by Lorrie Moore Faber, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 432 Is there anything more depressing than the prospect of reading a writer's [...]

The most subscribed to channel on YouTube--by far--belongs to a rather strange young Swede named Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie. Kjellberg has over 60 million subscribers, whom [...]

Prime Movers: From Pericles to Gandhi: Twelve Great Political Thinkers and What's Wrong with Each of Them by Ferdinand Mount Simon & Schuster, 25 [pounds sterling], pp. 438 You will [...]

Since 2006, someone called Kirsten Dirksen has been posting weekly videos on YouTube about 'simple living, self-sufficiency, small (and tiny) homes, backyard gardens (and livestock), alternative transport, DIY, craftsmanship and [...]

Through a Glass Darkly: Confessions of a Reluctant Water Drinker by Thomas Tylston Greg Pushkin/London Library, 4.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 95 Empire of Booze: British History Through the Bottom of [...]

The Letters of Samuel Beckett: Volume 4, 1966-1989 edited by George Craig, Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Dan Gunn and Lois More Overbeck Cambridge University Press, 29.99 £, pp. 944 'Krapping away [...]

The Penguin Book of British Short Stories Volume I: From Daniel Defoe to John Buchan Volume II: From P.G. Wodehouse to Zadie Smith edited by Philip Hensher Penguin, 25 £ [...]

None of us is above YouTube, and nothing is beneath it. We have of course all long since submitted to a universal medium whose sole purpose appears to be the [...]

The Ghost: A Cultural History by Susan Owens Tate Publishing, 19.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 288 Ghosts: A Haunted History by Lisa Morton Reaktion, 9.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 208 Children started [...]

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney Faber, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 336 Sympathy by Olivia Sudjic One, 14.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 416 A Thousand Paper Birds by Tor Udall Bloomsbury [...]

Letters of Intent: Selected Essays by Cynthia Ozick Atlantic, 30 [pounds sterling], pp. 592 Typewriters Bombs Jellyfish: Essays by Tom McCarthy NYRB, 10.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 160 Letters of Intent--letters [...]

SURVEILLANCE by Jonathan Raban Picador, £16.99, pp. 327, ISBN 0330413384 . £13.59 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Five years on, and the 9/11 books begin to mount up: we've [...]

TERRORIST by John Updike Penguin, £17.99, pp. 310, ISBN 0241143519 . £14.39 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the amazingly curious and apparently [...]

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME by Greil Marcus Faber, £18.99, pp. 304, ISBN 0571221564 . £15.19 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 You know the famous story about Freud [...]

TALK TALK by T. C. Boyle Bloomsbury, £10.99, pp. 340, ISBN 0747584249 . £8.79 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Capitalism, it might be argued, can be reduced to a [...]

EVERYMAN by Philip Roth Cape, £10, pp. 182 ISBN 9780224078690 . £8 (plus £2.45 p&p) 0870 429 6655 Nothing much to report here, no news and no surprises: dog bites [...]

Moonglow by Michael Chabon 4th Estate, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 430 Michael Chabon's back. He'd never gone away, of course--more than a dozen books in all--but it's been a long [...]

Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer Hamish Hamilton, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 571 For Jonathan Safran Foer fans and sceptics alike, Here I Am comes as a wonderful gift, [...]

Cols and Passes of the British Isles by Graham Robb Particular Books, 20 £, pp. 240, ISBN 9781846148736 If you have legs, or a bicycle, or indeed both, you are [...]

IMPERIAL by William T. Vollmann Alma Books, 20 £, pp. 1306, ISBN 9781846880964 [telephone] 16.79 £ (plus 2.45 £ p&p) 0870 429 6655 William T. Vollmann ruined my Christmas. But [...]

A Mercy by Toni Morrison Chatto, 15.99 £, pp. 168, ISBN 9780701180454 [telephone] 12.79 £ (plus 2.45 £ p&p) 0870 429 6655 You may or may not agree with the [...]